The College of Science is proud to announce that Debashis Mondal, an assistant professor of statistics, has been awarded the 2015 Young Researcher Award by the International Indian Statistical Association (IISA). He joined the Department of Statistics in 2014 as one of the College’s big data cluster hires.

Debashis Mondal, assistant professor of statistics

The award recognizes young researchers who have contributed significantly to statistical methodology to solve real world problems. Awards are made to researchers who are 45 years old or younger and who are active members of IISA.

Mondal was recognized for his work in theory and methods. He focuses on methodological work related to spatial statistics, matrix-free methods, Markov Chain Monte Carlo computations and time series analysis with applications in agriculture, geographical epidemiology and environmental sciences.

“I am proud that Debashis has received this international recognition which speaks to his excellence as well as his tremendous potential in statistical sciences,” said Sastry G. Pantula, dean of the College of Science. “Data science is a key area of growth and investment for the College of Science and for OSU.”

Mondal received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award for his work in spatial statistics. NSF Career Awards are given to the best proposals from young researchers across the country and across scientific disciplines. He has also received NSF funding for his study, “Connecting Markov Random Fields with Geostatistical Models.”

In 2014, Mondal presented his work with late Julian Besag on “Exact goodness-of-fit tests for Markov chains” at the Joint Statistical Meetings. The talk was the 2014 Biometrics showcase session at the conference. Mondal is an Associate Editor for Environmetrics and the Journal of Planning and Statistical Inference, and has published articles in journals, such as Bernoulli, Biometrika and the Journal of Royal Statistical Society (Series B). Mondal is committed to service in the field of statistics and to IISA. He is leading efforts to host the 2016 IISA Conference at OSU in August.

Prior to joining OSU, Mondal was on the statistics faculty at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Washington and both his bachelor and master’s degrees in statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, India.